All posts tagged territorial dispute

Japanese relief over South Korea’s decision earlier this month to scrap a construction project on disputed islets may have been premature. Seoul now says it will go ahead with a military drill later this month to stop “outside forces” from attempting to land there. Read More »

China and Japan issued a joint statement on Friday that laid out their intentions to resume talks after a long diplomatic chill. The short statement was carefully crafted to give the two sides plenty of room to offer their own interpretations and avoid giving the impression that they had made compromises. Read More »

South Korea said it would indefinitely postpone plans to build a bad weather shelter on islets it controls that are also claimed by Japan, a move seen by some as an effort to avoid further head-butting over the territorial dispute. Read More »

Japan is losing its public-relations battle with China over disputed islands and needs to turn the narrative around, say two retired senior U.S. military officers.

“We’ve got to start changing the narrative. Right now, in my personal opinion, we are not controlling it. China is controlling it,” said Wallace Gregson, a retired lieutenant general who served as assistant secretary of defense under President Barack Obama. Read More »

Less than a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty to annex Crimea, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made it clear that he stands with his western allies in condemning Russia’s territorial expansion, calling for more sanctions in addition to suspending bilateral investment talks.

But that wasn’t the message that the premier’s delegate gave on his behalf just a few blocks away at the unfortunately timed annual Japan-Russia Investment Forum held Wednesday morning. Read More »

During his recent Asia tour, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden pleaded with the leaders of South Korea and Japan to get along with each other so the three allies can work together at a time of rising regional tensions. He even made sure the message had sunk in with a follow-up phone call to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday.

The response in Seoul has been less than enthusiastic.“Frankly speaking, there seems to be no easy way out of the present situation,” a senior South Korean government official said in a blunt speech Tuesday to a group of American academics visiting Seoul — four days after Mr. Biden had visited the city. Read More »

One of South Korea’s easternmost islands of Dokdo, also called Takeshima in Japanese. Today is the Dokdo Day.

South Korea’s territorial dispute with Japan over a minuscule rocky outcropping in the ocean has been out of the headlines for some months, but Tokyo and Seoul are doing what they can to try and fix that.

Adding fuel to the fervor: Koreans are celebrating “Dokdo Day,” the Korean name for the islets, on Friday. Read More »

When the Japanese government announced one year ago today the purchase of a chain of tiny East China Sea islands at the heart of a territorial dispute with China, few in Japan imagined it would inflict major damage to ties between the two neighbors. After all, the purchase was intended to safeguard their friendship by keeping the islands out of the hands of a provocateur threatening to use them to incite tensions.

But that was not how Tokyo’s act was interpreted by Beijing, which took it as an outright violation of a longstanding detente, where both governments claimed the islands but neither directly owned them. What followed was a stunning deterioration in the relationship between the two Asian powers that dented bilateral trade and investment and fueled worries among security officials from Singapore to Washington. Read More »

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday chatted with Chinese President Xi Jinping for several minutes before a meeting of leaders of the Group of 20 nations in St Petersburg, Russia, but there was no indication that a formal meeting would follow anytime soon.

It was the first contact between the two leaders since former prime minister Yoshihiko Noda and Chinese leader Hu Jintao had a similar chat on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperate meeting in Russia in September last year. Read More »

Those hoping that trade between China and Japan would recover from the sharp drop last autumn caused by the flare-up of a territorial dispute have reason to be disappointed. New figures released by Japan’s government-affiliated trade promotion body show that not only is trade falling, officials expect the downturn to be prolonged.

Data from the Japan External Trade Organization showed that exports to China for the first half of the year fell to the lowest level in four years, as slowing infrastructure investments added to ongoing diplomatic tensions. Read More »

About Japan Real Time

Japan Real Time is a newsy, concise guide to what works, what doesn’t and why in the one-time poster child for Asian development, as it struggles to keep pace with faster-growing neighbors while competing with Europe for Michelin-rated restaurants. Drawing on the expertise of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, the site provides an inside track on business, politics and lifestyle in Japan as it comes to terms with being overtaken by China as the world’s second-biggest economy. You can contact the editors at japanrealtime@wsj.com